Enhanced pretreatment CD25 expression on peripheral blood CD4+ T cell predicts shortened survival in acute myeloid leukemia patients receiving induction chemotherapy

Abstract

Background: Recently, identification of CD25 (interleukin-2 receptor alpha) expression on leukemic blasts was correlated to early treatment failure and unfavorable outcome in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. Here we wished to determine whether quantification of CD25 on peripheral blood CD4+ T cells could improve prognostication in newly diagnosed AML patients.

Methods: The mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of CD25 expression and frequencies of peripheral blood CD4+ T cells with varying levels of CD25 and CD127 expression were assessed by flow cytometry in all studied individuals.

Results: Using univariate (unadjusted) and multivariate (adjusted) analyses we demonstrated that detection of high pretreatment CD25 expression on circulating CD4+ T cells was associated with significantly decreased survival rate of AML patients subjected to standard induction chemotherapy. These associations held true for both entire group of analyzed AML patients and different subgroups of patients identified by presence or absence of favorable and adverse molecular prognostic factors.

Conclusions: Our data indicate that quantification of CD25 expression on peripheral blood CD4+ T cells could become a novel, easily accessible method of shortened survival prognostication of AML patients subjected to standard cytotoxic therapy.

Keywords: CD25; Myeloid leukemia; Prognostication; T-cell mediated immunity.